


let sleeping snakes lie

by kythen



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, Knitting, Living Together, M/M, Post-Canon, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), am i projecting my need to sleep for an extended period of time onto crowley, mention of snake sweaters, possibly yes, sometimes you just gotta be a snake and go into hibernation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 07:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19330246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kythen/pseuds/kythen
Summary: The world doesn't end. Crowley falls asleep. And Aziraphale stays by his side, waiting for him to wake up again.





	let sleeping snakes lie

Aziraphale catches Crowley basking by his window one day, his black scales glittering in the sunlight amongst the brilliantly verdant leaves of his flourishing plants. There is a patch of floor before his window that is generously wide enough to accommodate the Serpent of Eden—now shrunken to the size of a common red-bellied black snake—as he curls up in a loose heap, his snout tucked away in the coils of his body.

Aziraphale has been here for a week, tentatively settled down in the chic, boxy, modern flat Crowley calls home as they try to figure out what to do after the end of the world had been averted and they had both abruptly resigned—or were at least taking an extended sabbatical with no conclusive end—from their respective jobs. Some days, he is here and some days they spend over at his bookshop, where Crowley lounges on one of Aziraphale’s armchairs, making interjections as Aziraphale reads passages from his books aloud to him.

It is a comfortable sort of peace that has settled between them, with neither of them having to look over their shoulders or weigh the consequences of their every move. Aziraphale feels like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, the sinking guilt that has dogged him persistently since the Beginning miraculously vanished after he had bluffed his way in and out of Hell. And perhaps Crowley feels that way as well, given by how languid and relaxed he looks—truly, this time, not the false bravado that had been carrying him through the millennia—all bundled up in a heap of snake on the floor.

Aziraphale lets him be, because it is the demon’s home after all and he can sleep on the floor all he likes. He finds his way into Crowley's kitchen, which is every bit as sleek and modern as the rest of his flat, and puts on the kettle for tea, wondering if Crowley will wake up in time to join him.

Crowley doesn't, sleeping through tea and dinner, until it is late enough that Aziraphale feels like he should be retiring to the bedroom Crowley had miracled into existence for him. He doesn't seem to have moved at all from his spot on the floor even though it has long gone cold after the sun had set and Aziraphale briefly wonders if Crowley was going to embark on another century-long nap. Given how exhausting the past two weeks have been, Aziraphale wouldn't blame him at all if he does, but he thinks that it would be a little bit lonely not having Crowley's company. They had been seeing each other more often, not just the once a decade or once a century, or even once a millennium, interactions they had had in the past six thousand years, and Aziraphale doesn't know if he is quite ready to return to the past status quo between them.

Something had… shifted between them since they averted the end of the world and Aziraphale sort-of-but-not-really moved into Crowley's flat when he thought his bookshop was well and truly gone. His bookshop had come back, thanks to Adam, but Crowley hadn't retracted his offer to let Aziraphale stay at his place and Aziraphale hadn't thought to move out so here they are, in a cohabitation situation that neither of them had actually discussed aloud.

It is this strange shift between them that emboldens Aziraphale to putter over to where Crowley is sleeping on a heap on the ground. While he doesn't indulge in sleep as much as Crowley does, he thinks that it would be far more comfortable for Crowley to sleep somewhere else, like the spectacular bed he has in his bedroom, rather than on the cold, hard floor. Aziraphale crouches down, reaching his hands out to Crowley's glittering black-scaled body, not quite sure if he should pick him up or just gently shake him awake—where was the shoulder on a snake's body anyway? After a brief moment of consideration, Aziraphale settles for stroking a tentative finger down Crowley's spine, in the vicinity of where he guesses a shoulder might be if snakes were to have one.

“My dear,” Aziraphale calls softly, “wouldn't it be more comfortable for you to move to your bed if you're going to sleep?"

No response. For the briefest moment, Aziraphale fears that Crowley might have expired while sleeping—even though immortal snakes can't quite pass on in their sleep—but then Crowley's mesmerising coils shift ever so slightly to reveal an irate snout. Crowley flicks his forked tongue out at him once, then tucks his snout into his coils and goes back to sleep.

Crowley hadn't said a word, but Aziraphale gets the impression that Crowley had just called him something rude in Snake. Either that or he had simply stuck his tongue out at him, which was rude by itself in all languages.

"Well," Aziraphale says, straightening up from his crouch and brushing his hands off, "if the floor suits you, I'll leave you be then. Goodnight, Crowley."

As he switches off the lights and walks back to his bedroom, he thinks he hears the faintest sleepy hiss come from somewhere behind him.

\---

In the morning, the sun rises, Aziraphale rises, but Crowley does not.

After getting dressed, Aziraphale opens his door and looks down the corridor to see the same black-scaled heap sprawled out on the ground. A shaft of morning sun slides in through the windows and Crowley is engulfed in it, taking up as much of the sun as he can, while still being obviously asleep.

Aziraphale makes himself breakfast in Crowley's kitchen, miracling himself a copy of the morning's paper, then makes his way back into the room with the plants and, now, one snake. The first time he had stepped into Crowley's flat, the poor things had been shivering from head to toe as Crowley advanced upon them, turning his black gaze over every beautifully verdant leaf. Aziraphale had wanted to compliment Crowley on his fine, if not unexpected, gardening skills, until Crowley had opened his mouth and spoke to his plants, not in the tender, loving way some gardeners are wont to do, but with a hiss and a thinly veiled threat.

The plants had still been trembling last night when Crowley had settled down amidst them and fallen asleep, but upon realising that their master would probably not be waking up any time soon, they had fallen still. As Aziraphale steps into the plant room with a mister in hand, he swears that he can hear a palpable sigh reverberate through the room.

Aziraphale knows that Crowley has intimidated his beautiful plants into their spectacular lushness, but even so, they won't be able to thrive without basic necessities like sunlight and water. He doesn't know if Crowley would mind if he cares for his plants while Crowley is taking an extended break from consciousness, but after a brief moment of hesitation, he goes about with misting the plants just like how he had seen Crowley do it—minus the yelling. And if he whispers little words of encouragement and praise as he goes about with it, well, Crowley doesn't need to know about it.

Twice, while going from plant to plant, Aziraphale nearly trips over the obstacle that the Serpent of Eden makes on the floor. The third time he stumbles, he thinks that he has had enough. This might be the demon's flat but Aziraphale is here too now and if he has to step over Crowley every time he wants to water the plants, he thinks that Crowley is in great danger of being trod on.

"Crowley, you're in the way," Aziraphale informs the sleeping snake and, unsurprisingly, receives no answer.

Aziraphale puts the plant mister down. He rolls up his sleeves methodically, taking great care with one and then the other, then crouches down and gives Crowley a business-like look.

"I'm going to lift you up now," Aziraphale warns him, giving Crowley five seconds to react, before he dives right in with his hands and scoops him up with infinite care.

Contrary to how he looks, Aziraphale has snake-wrangled before, first in the Garden of Eden with the many snakes who had looked at the first humans with far too much interest. He hadn't hurt any of them, given that they had done nothing to warrant that, but he had relocated them to sheltered nooks and shallow creeks in the Garden that were safe from harm and harming. Snakes had been a great constant throughout history, with one snake more constant than the others in Aziraphale's personal history, and the last time he had needed to wrangle a snake was when he was in Australia in the last century or so. There had been plenty of snakes then and there were only so many miracles he was entitled to in a day before it became "frivolous" so he had needed to deal with some of them in a more… hands-on way.

Crowley poses none of the challenges that the other snakes had given Aziraphale, hanging long and limp like a very heavy and inedible (very possibly venomous) strand of noodle in his arms. He is unusually long for a snake of his species, or the earthly species he is mimicking, and Aziraphale has to tamp down on the urge to just coil him up like an unwieldy garden hose and sling him over his shoulder. Instead, he does his best to gather up all the serpentine coils in his arms, cradling him to his chest as he heads towards Crowley's bedroom.

Aziraphale unravels Crowley onto his bed and even though his slitted golden eyes gleam back at Aziraphale as Aziraphale arranges his head comfortably on his pillow, Aziraphale knows that he is still well and truly dead to the world. With a gentle tug, Aziraphale draws the covers over the rest of Crowley's serpentine body and tucks him into bed decisively. If Crowley was going into hibernation for heaven knows how long, he should do it properly.

Brushing his hands off, Aziraphale lets himself out and shuts the door quietly behind him, leaving Crowley to his sleep.

\---

Crowley has been asleep for three days, which Aziraphale frankly finds excessive, barely budging when Aziraphale checks in on him from time to time. Crowley doesn't need food and water the same way that Earthly living beings do, but Aziraphale wonders if he will eventually get bored of sleeping and wake up. It has been three days since Aziraphale has returned to his bookshop and he is starting to feel a little restless.

After the apocalypse that wasn’t, it had become something of an unspoken arrangement between the both of them to spend most, if not all, of their time in each other's company. It wasn’t like they had any other jobs to be rushing off to and neither of them had formed close relationships with anyone else in the twenty-first century, apart from a budding friendship with the young anti-Antichrist Adam, the witch Anathema, and Newt. The double kidnapping and execution had put them on guard, and without Agnes to give them any more warnings, all they could do now was to keep an eye out for any other incoming threats. They were all each other had now, since they turned their backs on Heaven and Hell, and they had to watch out for each other and keep each other safe.

Or at least that was what they were supposed to do until Crowley decided to go into hibernation for an unspecified amount of time. The least he could do was tell Aziraphale how long he planned to sleep for this time, but all efforts at waking him up had either resulted in a very irate noodle or an unresponsive garden hose. There were only so many unflattering snake-like comparisons Aziraphale could come up with to pass the time before it got boring and Aziraphale thinks longingly of his books. He has yet to properly catalogue all of them after Adam made some very inspired additions to his collections.

He could nip out for the day and return in the evening, but the thought of leaving Crowley vulnerable and asleep in a place that two demons had already managed to storm into worries Aziraphale. What if Hell decides to come after Crowley? What if _Heaven_ comes knocking on his door this time? The thought of something happening to Crowley while he is asleep, like painful disintegration via holy water, makes Aziraphale stay put in Crowley's flat for another day, watering Crowley's plants and rereading the painfully vapid magazines that Crowley has scattered tastefully around his designer flat.

The next day, Aziraphale wakes up, goes about with his usual breakfast-and-watering-the-plants routine, picks up a tabloid magazine he has read for the seventh time, and puts it down. He marches into Crowley's bedroom, where the snake has burrowed himself under the blankets, and takes a stand.

Ten minutes later, Aziraphale finds himself flagging down a taxi with a bagful of snake on one shoulder. He already feels much lighter in spirit, if not in shoulder, bubbling with anticipation at being able to return to his bookshop _while_ keeping an eye on Crowley. Despite all the snake-wrangling, Crowley hadn't stirred at all when Aziraphale had bundled him up into a extra large messenger bag that he miracled up for the express purpose of snake-transporting. Anyone looking at Aziraphale standing on the street with Crowley in a bag on his shoulder would never have guessed that he was carrying a snake in his bag on the first try. They might suspect that something was up by the unusual size and bulkiness of the bag, but given the rarity of people casually carrying snakes around in bags around London, guessing that there was a snake in Aziraphale's bag would take the luck and deduction skills of someone very unusual.

A taxi pulls up along the curb before him and Aziraphale hefts the bag containing Crowley with a muted grunt as he gets in, careful not to bump his friend against the doorframe. He gives the taxi driver the address of his bookshop then settles in comfortably, arranging Crowley in the bag on his lap.

“What’ve you got there?” the taxi driver asks, settling one inquisitive eye on Aziraphale in the rear view mirror as he speeds off along the narrow streets of London.

“Nothing,” Aziraphale says quickly and _that_ catches the driver’s attention. As the driver raises one eyebrow, opening his mouth as if he has half a mind to prod further, Aziraphale decides to save him the trouble and promptly puts his foot in his mouth. “Or something. But it’s perfectly safe, I assure you. Just a piece of luggage. Perfectly appropriate for riding a taxi.”

And it is at that precise moment that Crowley begins to snore.

Aziraphale has only heard it from him once or twice over the course of the past few days when Crowley had been decidedly comatose. It had sounded to him like the rustling of the leaves at first and he had thought that the poor plants were shivering because Crowley had finally woken up. However, when Aziraphale had gone to investigate, he realised that the plants were not shivering, Crowley had not moved from his spot on the floor, and that snakes could, in fact, snore.

Or, at least, snakes which were also demons could snore because Aziraphale has never been in prolonged close contact with another snake before and could not make a sweeping statement about them all.

The sound that Crowley makes that Aziraphale had classified as a snore is gentle, like the whooshing of breath through relaxed airways, only that in a snake, the gentle whooshing of breath comes out as more of a hiss. Aziraphale finds it adorable. Crowley as a snake is no more menacing to him than he is as a demon and he had found the sound soothing, in a way. Peaceful-like.

However, now in a taxi, with a driver whose attention had regretfully been brought to the something in the bag on Aziraphale’s lap, which is most certainly not nothing, but something, despite Aziraphale’s muddling assurances, Crowley’s little snake snores are causing Aziraphale an undue amount of stress.

"Aye, that is something indeed," the driver snorts, keeping his attention split between the road and Aziraphale. "Transporting contraband, are we?"

As Aziraphale stiffens up, ready to _suggest_ to the driver that perhaps the road was all that needed watching and Aziraphale was a perfectly normal passenger with a perfectly normal bag, the driver catches his eye in the mirror. "No need to panic. I don't mind passengers taking their pets along on a ride. I'd just have appreciated a heads up."

Aziraphale nods shortly, crisis averted for the moment. The list of things he doesn't have to tell Crowley seems to keep growing. First, don't tell Crowley that he had looked after his plants during his absence from the waking world. Aziraphale is in no way responsible for the new buds on any of his plants, which had been so deprived of positive encouragement that they had thrown up all sorts of new colourful things the moment Aziraphale started praising them. Second, don't tell Crowley that he had been referred to as a pet. Aziraphale has never been out in public with Crowley as a snake and has never had the chance to witness what Crowley's reaction would be to being referred to as a pet, but he can guess that it wouldn't go down well with him.

"Why don't you take him out of the bag then?" the driver carries on. "The poor thing must be suffocating in there."

"Oh, I don't think that would be a good idea." Aziraphale flashes the man a faint smile. It is certainly thoughtful of him to care for the creature in Aziraphale's bag, but he suspects that the man is under the assumption that Crowley is something small and cute and furry, not something long and cute and scaly. "He's, um, shy."

The driver nods knowingly and they lapse into a comfortable silence that lasts for approximately five seconds before the driver opens his mouth again. "What kind—"

"Just drive please," Aziraphale suggests peevishly and the driver suddenly finds that the only thing holding his undivided interest is the road and getting his passenger to his destination in the safest and promptest manner possible.

\---

The days stretch out into weeks and the weeks into months and Crowley never does more than sleep-slither into a new patch of sunlight when the sun moves from east to west through Aziraphale's dusty shop window. Aziraphale still goes back to Crowley's flat at night, to tend to the plants and discourage dust from settling on any of Crowley's designer furniture, but most of his time is spent here with his books. And with Crowley, who has been set aside in a cozy basket that Aziraphale had spotted in the front window of a furniture shop.

He still talks to the occasional customer and the neighbours and the various proprietors of his various favourite restaurants, but he comes to miss Crowley's sardonic drawl and wit. No one else has lived through the full run of human history like Aziraphale has and he misses talking to Crowley, reminiscing about the old days or getting his opinions on the newfangled technology that has been springing up all over the place. He can't understand half of what the teenagers on the street are talking about now without Crowley to keep him up to speed, and tables for one at restaurants never quite fit as right as tables for two.

To some extent, he understands Crowley's need for sleep. It had been an exhausting decade for the both of them, what with the end of the world business, and it had culminated spontaneously in them cutting off their ties with both Heaven and Hell rather dramatically, which were the only ties that either of them have ever had since the Beginning. Just as Crowley had sauntered from the ranks of Heaven to Hell, he had finally found his way out of Hell and into something that finally felt like freedom.

No one to tell them what to do. No need to send memos back to their respective head offices. No more constant surveillance and angels and demons dropping by out of the blue. (At least, for _now_.) For the first time in their very long existences, they are free to do as they like.

In this newfound freedom, Aziraphale reads. He (subtly) chases customers out of his bookshop and away from his precious first edition books with bad service, glowering looks, and damp, musty smells, and settles in with his books in the back room and reads. On the other hand, Crowley sleeps. Crowley has never had the same fondness for books that Aziraphale has, but he still listens when Aziraphale reads out loud and respects Aziraphale's need to hunch over a book for days without moving, and it is in that same way that Aziraphale respects Crowley's need for sleep.

He rearranges his bookshop to make a pocket of space for Crowley, putting the basket with a snug blanket in his back room, investing in a heat lamp for the days that the sun doesn't quite make it through the gloomy skies of London. In winter, when the damp chill permeates into the depths of the bookshop, Aziraphale takes up knitting. He has a lot of spare time now with only the bookshop to manage—and sometimes not even that because it had never been about sales and revenue with his bookshop. The little old lady who runs the tea shop across the road invites him over to her knitting club because he seems lonely without his boyfriend around. It takes the group of matronly old ladies that makes up her knitting club less than an hour to warm up to Crowley when Aziraphale brings him over in his messenger bag and they coo and fret over him so much that Crowley ends up with a whole collection of woollen sweaters to tide him through the winter. Aziraphale resolves to knit at least one human-shaped sweater for him so that Crowley can at least have something to keep him warm when he isn't snake-shaped.

The days are peaceful. It feels a lot like retirement, between the knitting club and sitting in his bookshop for days at end, with a book in hand, a cup of cocoa at his elbow, and a dozing snake curled up in his lap. Aziraphale still wishes that Crowley will wake up soon because he misses his voice and their conversations, the meaningful looks behind his dark glasses, and the shared memory of a world between them.

But, at the very least, he is still here. In body, if not in consciousness. He is very small and very still in comparison to the lanky, swaggering figure he usually makes, but Aziraphale supposes that sometimes one finds the need to be very small and very still and away from the world for a while.

In the meantime, Aziraphale will just have to watch the world for both of them.

\---

Crowley wakes up warm. It is nice, having a source of heat to chase away the perpetual chill that comes with being cold-blooded. It is why he likes basking in the sun and on warm rocks and by cheery fireplaces and space heaters. A hand strokes down the length of his spine, familiar and, _oh_ , that is nice. He wriggles a bit, smugly soaking up the attention from his angel and the heat from his touch before he reluctantly pours himself out of Aziraphale's lap and onto the seat next to him, fully formed in his human shape.

Crowley sprawls, boneless, on a sofa that is far too lumpy and soft to be his, and lets his gaze wander, taking in the cramped shelves and over-piled tables that make up Aziraphale's bookshop. The basket with the rumpled, slept-in blanket and the heat lamp are new additions, a section of table cleared away specially for them, as well as the selection of curiously colourful woollen tubes laid out beside the basket. He thinks he might have been wearing one of those, as a snake, and he scratches absently at where it had been willed away when he had shifted into his human shape.

"Good morning, my dear. Did you sleep well?" Aziraphale asks from beside him on the sofa, as if snakes slithered out of his lap to become Crowley every day. He is reading, because of course he is, but he places a bookmark between the pages and diverts his attention to Crowley with a smile as Crowley's travelling gaze settles on him.

All of Aziraphale's smiles are radiant—it comes with being a celestial being. However, over the millennia, Crowley has learnt to read the different kinds of smiles that Aziraphale wears. There is the default, genial smile that is wholeheartedly genuine and leaves him looking like someone's kindly old uncle. Then there are the strained smiles, which Crowley had been amply treated to during the starting days of their tentative acquaintanceship. One of his favourite Aziraphale smiles still has to be the devious ones, when Aziraphale feigns innocence the best he can while the little bit of bastard in him leaks out through the corners of his upturned lips.

And then there are these smiles, the ones that Crowley has been seeing more and more often when Aziraphale is around him. After Falling, the Grace had been stripped from Crowley, leaving him empty where he had felt so much before. He still feels the dark, bitter emotions that radiate from humans, like rage or misery or a deep, aching pain, but the good emotions that Aziraphale gets excited and natters on about are all but lost to him. It has been a long time since Crowley has been able to feel love, but when he looks at Aziraphale, who smiles at him with such a tenderness, with such a radiance that is all Aziraphale's and Aziraphale's alone, he thinks, that must be what love feels like.

"How long wasss I asssleep?" Crowley rasps out, his voice husky and still holding traces of a hiss from staying a snake for so long.

"About a year," Aziraphale says, after a brief moment of thought. "Not as long as your previous nap."

"I needed that." Crowley yawns, stretching out lazily on the sofa and hearing his body pop and crack most satisfyingly.

"I could tell," Aziraphale remarks fondly, the slightest hint of amusement slipping into his smile.

Crowley is still warm, his human body regulating his temperature much better than his snake body could, but Crowley thinks he could stand to be warmer. To be closer.

"'M not used to having arms and legs again." Crowley leans in, placing his head on Aziraphale's shoulder, his side fitting comfortably against Aziraphale's soft and giving body as he slumps against him, like two halves of a book coming perfectly together. "Will you hold me again, angel? Just until I get the feeling in my limbs back."

Crowley's hand had fallen accidentally-on-purpose in the vicinity of Aziraphale's, a gentle suggestion that lies between them, and Aziraphale slips his hand into Crowley's, his delicate fingers weaving between Crowley's spindly ones and holding him fast.

"Of course. For as long as you need me to, my dear." With practised ease, Aziraphale picks up his book with his other hand, slips out the bookmark one-handedly, and starts reading again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So this is my first foray into writing Good Omens after the TV show blasted me right back into my days of youth. Hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> The idea for Crowley as a red-bellied black snake comes from [this post on tumblr.](https://honeyreynolds.tumblr.com/post/185540020988/honeyreynolds-i-find-it-so-fuckin-funny-that)
> 
> MY WONDERFUL FRIEND SEL DREW A SOFT AND SWEET COMPANION ART PIECE FOR THIS FIC PLEASE GO AND TAKE A LOOK AT IT [HERE](https://selpeda.tumblr.com/post/185843369703/aziraphale-taking-care-of-the-sleepy-tired-snek). I'M JUST SO _SOFT_.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Find me here: [tumblr](http://kythen.tumblr.com) / [twitter](http://twitter.com/catcrowcalls)


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